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Originally Posted by blindside
I would like to return to the blade nomenclature ...
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the commonly used terms
at present in luzon for work and/or self-defense blades are
sundang/sondang, itak, gulok, and tabak.
sundang, itak, and gulok (which are synonyms) are more of the dual-purpose blades (work and self defense). a tabak on the other hand is purely a weapon.
thus the ones exhibited being apparently 'side arms', should be properly called tabak. 'sansibar' is not used at all in luzon, incidentally.
historically, a lot more terms are used. we can see some of them in the pages below of san buenaventura's excellent 1613 spanish-tagalog (i.e., luzon) dictionary. an online version is
here.
in that dictionary, we can see that the tagalog word for sword (espada in spanish) is 'kalis'. in other parts of the philippines, it's 'karis', because 'l' and 'r' are sometimes interchangeable to us (ilanun/iranun, lanao/ranao, balangay/barangay, etc.).
in indonesia/malaysia which are next door to us, our kalis/karis is 'keris' if i'm not mistaken. thus the cognates kalis/karis/keris (and presumably, 'kris' is their contraction) is the ancient philippine/indonesian/malaysian term for the common sword.
for the short sword (alfange/alfanje in old dictionaries), the luzon equivalent is 'tabak', as can be seen in that 1613 dictionary.
in summary, the luzon short swords we are seeing above are definitely called 'tabak', even from the olden days.
by the way, can any of the our spanish-speaking friends do us a favor, by translating the spanish portions below of the definitions of "alfanje/tabac" and "espada/kalis"
i'm sure we will learn more, that way. thanks in advance!